Jon Cleary - Endpeace

‘I think,’ said Random, sucking on his pipe which no one had ever seen him light, ‘we’d better not start pointing the finger just yet. Let the newspapers do that, they have more experts than we do.’

‘Righto,’ said Malone. ‘What’ve we got? Kate?’

‘I’ve been right through the family, grandkids and all. God, what a bunch!’ Her antipathy towards the Huxwood clan seemed to have increased since yesterday. ‘There are six grandkids, three of them with minor records. Car-stealing –’

‘Car-stealing?’ said Andy Graham. ‘With their money? They’d all own Porsches at least.’

Kate Arletti shrugged. ‘Rebellion, I guess. They’re a rebellious lot, most of them. Two of them have drug charges against them, possession of. None of them says he or she knows anything of what happened the night before last.’

‘What about the rest of the family, the kids’ parents?’ asked Clements.

‘They were mine.’ Phil Truach coughed, a hint that the meeting had gone on long enough without his having had a smoke. He and Random were the only two grey-heads in the group: Random the senior by five years and a chief superintendent, Truach only recently promoted to sergeant. But rank had seemingly never worried Phil Truach and if he never hurried himself, there was no one in Homicide more thorough than he. ‘Nobody heard nothing, nobody has a clue why the old man should’ve been shot. They’ve all got their backs to the wall, a blank wall.’

‘Not entirely blank,’ said Malone. ‘Derek let his hair down a bit to me and so did the Number One son-in-law Ned Custer. The rumours of a sell-off of Huxwood Press are true and it’s turning into a dog-fight in the family.’

‘Who’s for it and who’s against it?’ John Kagal was the handsomest and smartest dressed in the group. He was also the only detective with a university degree, a distinction he had once quietly flaunted but which he had now learned to hide. Elitism is tolerated and admired in the criminal classes, but in the rest of the native working class, including the police, it is looked upon as a criminal offence. Some day, as inevitably as crime would continue to be committed, Kagal would have Greg Random’s rank, but he had learned, too, to hide his ambition. He had been given a lesson in police service culture: that seniority was as sanctified as motherhood. Wedded motherhood, that is.

‘I don’t know who’s for or against it,’ said Malone. ‘Who checked the butler and his wife?’

‘I did,’ said Kagal. ‘They’re clean. They’ve been in Australia eighteen years, they’re Australian citizens. They’ve worked for the Huxwoods for five years, got good reports.’

‘I checked the gardener,’ said Malone. ‘That leaves only the under-gardener as a regular on the place. Plus the security guards who patrol each night.’

‘I’ve checked them,’ said Andy Graham, restless as ever on his chair. He was always ready to be up and away, usually like a bull at a gate. ‘The first lot check on the hour through the night, the other lot on the half-hour. There’d be a gap of, say, twenty minutes between each check. Time for an outsider, if it was an outsider and knew the routine, to nip in and do the deed.’

‘That leaves the under-gardener. He didn’t come in yesterday. Why?’

‘He’s in today,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘I was out there early this morning, double-checking.’ Her diligence equalled that of Andy Graham, though she managed to be more restrained than he. ‘He had a virus or something yesterday, he said. He’s okay today.’

I’ll talk to him, Malone told himself. He didn’t, however, tell that to Kate; he didn’t believe in implying that a job was only well done when he did it himself. ‘What’s the report from Ballistics?’

‘One bullet, a Thirty-two. If a pillow was used to muffle the shot, Clarrie Binyan thinks the gun could be a Browning, or something like it.’

‘Any shell?’

‘No sign of one. He collected it, looks like.’ Clements closed his notebook. ‘It doesn’t look like a professional job, not if he didn’t use a silencer.’

‘Would an amateur collect the shell? Why would he go in for housekeeping like that?’

Clements shrugged. ‘I dunno. I still think the answer’s in the family.’

‘Don’t harp on that,’ said Random. ‘The family has a friend upstairs.’

Malone kept quiet, but Truach said, ‘The Minister?’

‘No, AC Zanuch.’

‘Oh shit!’

‘Exactly. And that’s what’ll hit the fan if we start talking about the family. I’ll see you outside, Scobie.’ He rose, unhurried as usual, nodded at the group in general and left.

Malone got up from behind the table where he had presided over the meeting, made an I-don’t-know gesture at Clements and followed Random out of the room. The chief superintendent led the way down towards the lifts. He had put his pipe in a side pocket, as if he no longer needed a prop in a man-to-man conversation.

‘Nobody wants this one, Scobie. Steve Lozelle, out at Waverley, it’s in his command. They’ll set up the incident room and do the donkey work. But he wants us to run it, subject to him being in nominal charge. Okay?’

Malone nodded, wondering why the usual jealousy of turf was being sacrificed in this case. Perhaps the Waverley commander already knew that AC Zanuch might interfere.

‘There’s another thing.’ Random took his pipe out of his pocket, had it halfway to his mouth when he had second thoughts and put it away again. ‘Have you seen the Tele-Mirror this morning? They say you were a dinner guest at the Huxwoods’ night before last. They’re playing it up as if you’re that guy in Burke’s Law , the cop with the stiff neck and the corset. My wife tells me Alan Jones had something about it on 2.UE this morning, that you’re a friend of the family –’

‘Balls! I’d never met the family till two nights ago. I hadn’t seen Derek Huxwood in years –’ He explained the circumstances of the dinner invitation.

‘Well –’ Random took the pipe out of his pocket, tapped it in the palm of his hand. He looked almost nervous, something Malone had never seen before. ‘It’s too late now – that would only confirm what they’re hinting, if we took you off it. Just watch it, that’s all. Any hint of the family being suspected is out, okay? Bill Zanuch is leaning on me –’

‘How close is he to them?’

‘I don’t know. But you know him – if he’d been alive at the time he’d have been at the Last Supper. Then he’d have gone to lunch with Pontius Pilate the next day.’ He looked around him to make sure he wasn’t overheard; then he let go his slow smile. ‘Christ help us if ever he becomes Commissioner. We won’t be able to arrest anyone without first checking with the social editors.’

Both men were silent a while, contemplating an awful future. Then the lift doors opened; the lift was empty. ‘Ride down with me.’ The doors closed, locking them in a small chamber where secrets could be exchanged. ‘I don’t know whether he knows anything, but he’s protecting the Huxwoods. I don’t like it any more than you and Russ do, but I’ve got to wear it. Zanuch’s been specific. He wants none of what we had last year with the Cabramatta murder.’ A prominent politician, campaigning against gang crimes in his electorate, had been shot in a western suburb where there was a large Asian community. ‘From the first the media started pointing the finger at the Vietnamese, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support it –’

‘We still haven’t nabbed who did it.’

‘Nonetheless, we had to keep denying it. Just watch it, Scobie.’ They had reached the ground floor, the doors opened. ‘Let me know everything, everything , that turns up. ’Luck.’